Law, Power, and Justice

PARIS – Israeli digital arms producers like NSO were once the stars of national security expos like Milipol Paris, where arms dealers and defense firms of all stripes convene to pitch their wares to representatives of military and police forces from across the world. However, those visiting the Parc des Expositions in northern Paris last month would see nary an Israeli spyware producer between the seemingly endless sea of booths of rifles and drones, barricades and surveillance technologies.
Once the pride and joy of the Israeli military industrial complex, the spearhead of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s so-called cyber diplomacy, offensive spyware firms like NSO, Candiru, Insanet or others selling hacking technologies to states were nowhere to be found this year in Europe’s biggest homeland security expo.

Though Israeli offensive cyber firms did not attend, their European competitors did: RCS, producer of the Hermit spyware that is considered a competitor of NSO’s Pegasus; Memento Labs, formerly known as Hacking Team; and IPS-Intelligence, all Italian firms, were present. Alongside these known spyware vendors, previously unreported ones also pitched on the expo floor: Invasys, a Czech firm being revealed here for the first time, offered an “offensive cyber” program Kelpie with the ability to hack iPhones and Android and thus access fully encrypted communications apps.